This invention relates generally to equipment for reviewing information printed on relatively flat articles, and for gathering information, such as weight, concerning these articles, and is more particularly directed toward automatic verification of postage and address information for articles to be mailed.
Many corporations and organizations disseminate information and advertising material through the mail. In order to minimize the costs associated with this type of mailing, the United States Postal Service (USPS) offers bulk mailing rates that result in decreased cost of mailing for each piece of mail. Certain types of preprocessing by bulk mailing organizations, such as presorting of bulk mail into lots by ZIP code, helps the USPS in mail sorting and leads to further discounts in the cost of mailing for bulk mailing organizations.
Of course, because of the large volume of bulk mail, the USPS would lose considerable revenue if bulk mailing organizations failed to comply strictly with their presorting obligations but still tried to take advantage of lower postal rates. It is also possible, through error, that a bulk mailer may apply insufficient metered postage to articles of mail. In addition, the USPS must have some form of quality control and verification to ensure that bulk mailers"" presort efforts are accurate, so that improperly sorted bulk mail does not slow down the operation of USPS sorting activities.
Traditionally, this verification process is performed manually (with the exception of barcode verification). This manual verification process is very labor intensive and prone to error. Accordingly, a need arises for an automated verification system that is capable of processing large volumes of mail with speed and accuracy, and that maintains proper records relating to each bulk mailer for which verification operations are conducted.
These needs and others are satisfied by the verification apparatus of the present invention. In accordance with the invention, apparatus for automatically acquiring and verifying, relative to pre-established rules, information affixed to relatively flat articles transported along a transport path comprises weighing means for measuring weight of articles being processed, image acquisition means for acquiring a representation of indicia appearing on an article, processing means for recognition of the indicia appearing on an article, and processing means for verifying acquired data against the pre-established rules.
The apparatus may further comprise infeed means for transporting the articles from an input stage to subsequent processing stages. The infeed means may comprise an infeed conveyor mechanism that singulates articles for subsequent processing.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, the weighing means comprises an in-line scale that weighs articles individually. The apparatus may further comprise identification printing means for applying numeric identification to at least some of the articles. The printing means may comprise an ink jet print head disposed along the transport path.
In one form of the invention, the image acquisition means comprises a CCD camera and illumination means. The illumination means comprises a plurality of support structures housing light-directing fibers.
In another aspect of the invention, the processing means for recognition of the indicia appearing on an article returns postage information relating to postage type, wherein postage type is selected from the group of postage types consisting essentially of meter, permit, and stamp. The processing means for recognition of the indicia appearing on an article may return postage value, postage class, address information, and various kinds of barcode information such as barcode decode value and barcode print quality information. Both the processing means for recognition of indicia appearing on an article and the processing means for verifying acquired data may comprise a microcomputer.
In yet another aspect of the invention, the apparatus may further comprise stacking means for re-collecting articles. In general, the articles disposed along the transport path are arranged in an original order and orientation, and the stacking means re-collects the articles in the original order and orientation.
In still another form of the invention, the pre-established rules may include a number of parameters such as bar code print quality, compatibility of bar code decode value and address information, weight restrictions, postage type restrictions, postage value restrictions, postage class restrictions, and destination sort requirements. Sort requirements may be valid for a current sort data base, or for one or more prior databases.
In still another aspect of the present invention, verification results are printed as reports in a predetermined format. The apparatus may further comprise scanning means for automatic reading of bar codes associated with groups of articles.
In yet another form of the invention, apparatus for automatically acquiring, storing, and verifying indicia affixed to relatively flat articles comprises infeed means for transporting articles from an input stage to subsequent processing stages, weighing means for measuring weight of articles being processed, printing means for affixing identifying indicia to each article, image acquisition means for acquiring a representation of selected indicia appearing on each article, control processor means for controlling acquisition, storage, and verification, and image processing means, in communication with the control processing means, for synchronization of acquisition, storage, and verification.
The infeed means preferably comprises an infeed conveyor mechanism that singulates articles for subsequent processing. The weighing means may comprise an in-line scale that weighs each article individually, and the printing means comprises an ink jet print head disposed proximate to the image acquisition means. The image acquisition means preferably comprises a CCD camera and illumination means.
In one form of the invention, the illumination means comprises a plurality of support structures housing light directing fibers. The control processor means comprises a microcomputer controller in communication with the image processing means, while the control processor means communicates with the image processing means via a serial communications protocol. The image processing means is preferably a microprocessor controller in serial communication with the control processor means.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, apparatus for processing and verifying indicia disposed upon articles to be mailed comprises an infeed magazine in communication with a transport mechanism defining a transport path for the articles, a weighing station receiving articles from the transport mechanism and weighing each article individually, an ink jet printer disposed along the transport path, the ink jet printer applying a numeric identification to each article, a camera unit positioned along a scanning locus that scans the indicia disposed on each article and stores image information in an associated memory, an illumination mechanism associated with the camera unit, providing illumination directed toward the scanning locus, and a control processor and an image processor interconnected by a serial communication link, the control and image processors synchronizing data acquisition, storage, and comparison for verification of indicia disposed upon the articles.
In one form of the invention, the serial communication link comprises a bi-directional serial link over which commands, status messages, and data packets are exchanged. The bi-directional serial link comprises an RS-232 serial link at approximately 19,200 baud. Serial messages are exchanged over the serial communication link, and each serial message begins with a predetermined start character and ends with a predetermined stop character. Preferably, the start character and stop character are 1 byte ASCII characters.
In yet another aspect of the invention, each serial message includes cyclic redundancy check information and a sequence number. Each message is acknowledged by the recipient through transmission of an acknowledgment message when the message is received correctly, and each incorrectly received message causes a negative acknowledgment message to be transmitted. Preferably, the sender resends a message at least once if an acknowledgment message is not received within a predetermined time. Each acknowledgment message includes the sequence number.
Further objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and drawings.